This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Countering PM’s do-nothing climate policy

Sun., April 26, 2015

Re: Canada is a rogue state on climate change policy, Opinion April 21

Canada is a rogue state on climate change policy, Opinion April 21

Many many thanks for the article. I was beginning to despair that no one at the Star seems to really understand the dreadful track record of Stephen Harper regarding his inaction on climate change and the silencing of so many legitimate and important sources of information.

How dangerous it would be to put him in charge again, both for our country (we used to enjoy such respect in the world), and for our grandchildren’s world, which we would hope will be a sustainable one.

With so many people busy trying to pretend that it can be “business as usual” in spite of where experts say this will lead the next generations, it must be hard to highlight the unfortunate and inconvenient truth about the excess of carbon emissions in the air, the effect this is having on our climate, and the resulting changes in our oceans, flora and fauna, etc.

Article Continued Below

We need as a society to have public dialogue and discussion about what’s happening and this article hopefully will spark some of this. It’s difficult, no doubt, but to remain silent is to adopt the “do nothing” philosophy and that will unfortunately get Harper elected again and make the problems with the environment worse for the next generation.

Once again, thanks to Omer Aziz and the Star for this excellent article.

Janet Bartram-Thomas, Richmond Hill

This excellent summation of our horrible record as a climate laggard and worse, doesn’t go far enough. We are bad enough that we have to be seen as climate criminals, where our emissions cause great harm and even deaths, and increasingly it is possible to link extreme events with excess greenhouse gases.

While it is clear that the real problem has far more to do with Ottawa than ordinary citizens, as a wealthy country of well-off citizens, being chased in class action suits by the world’s poor and displaced for damages could – and likely should – affect RRSPs and other pools of wealth. Air miles might mean extra payouts.

It’s not that we didn’t know.

Hamish Wilson, Toronto

Omer Aziz scolds Canadians for our high energy consumption. And why would it not be so? We live in an intemperate climate with cold winters. We have one of the world’s lowest population densities, right there with Iceland, Mongolia, and Australia. Our urban centres are scattered over thousands of kilometres. High-mileage automobile usage is still essential for over 80 per cent of adults. The distribution of goods covers huge distances.

We choose to travel internationally more than any country other than some in the close-knit EU bloc. We are one of the world’s largest material, mineral and energy exporters, so necessary for our national economic well-being.

We do have responsibility to reduce emissions. But not recognizing the unique Canadian issues does not advance the debate. There is another measurement rarely mentioned. Among rich world countries, Canada is the second lowest per-square-kilometre emitter of greenhouse gases, behind only Australia.

Mike Brown, Burlington

Omer Aziz for Prime Minister! Well said in your article pointing out that Harper is the main rogue in our country, selling Canada down the road to embarrassment, ignoring what we should be doing for climate change, not attending important global environment meetings, ignoring and not speaking to our provincial premiers, muzzling our scientists – remember we pay all of those scientists and need to demand reports direct from them, not through the big muzzle himself.

Harper has let Canada down himself and is to blame for the position we have to bear as a once proud country that stood at the top of the global ladder with the rest looking up to us as leaders.

Omer Aziz pointed out that his generation and the one yet unborn will have to also carry that bad climate weight but further whatever is left of our world long after Harper is gone.

Good for you, Omer, for standing up and making your statement. We need more young people like you to stand up against this tyrant, force him out and start repairing the damage he has left behind so that there will be something left for the future.

Chris Andrews, Woodbridge

Here’s another in a seemingly endless series of Star articles suggesting that Harper is single handedly responsible for ending civilization as we know it by his inaction on the global warming issue.

All of these articles have one thing in common – they are silent on the impact of proposed action on global temperatures and fail to propose metrics for measuring the effectiveness of suggested emission reduction measures.

Will Canada’s failure to “act” cause global temperatures to rise by a significant one degree at the end of the century? Or will it be a meaningless billionth of a degree?

Star columnists don’t seem to think that quantitative results matter in the least. Let’s just “do something” to feel really good about ourselves – we don’t need pesky cost/benefit analyses to properly rank the issue in a societal priority list. After all, that “logic” was good enough to implement Ontario’s Green Energy Act.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com